I've spent some time not wandering around doing random projects and just studying existing ones (mostly byuu's). And I feel like I've learned a lot, so much that I want to stop learning and start some doing again.

For now I have my sights set on a SNES fighting game. Mostly inspired by a quote from this post:

tepples wrote:

The workaround is for the leagues to collaborate on developing a quality fighting game whose program is free software and whose assets are free cultural works.

That quote made me wonder what a legitimate open-source fighting game would be like. It would be painfully ambitious on my part trying to code it, but as for graphics and all, I'll probably just rip some MK3 sprites and call it that for a while. Yes, I'm aware that that makes the assets non-free until original graphics are make, and they might make me unable to put demos on here because of copyright. We'll see. With how long my attention span is for one project, I wouldn't exactly make my money back paying an artist right now.

What I want to knock out first is what people would actually want to play. The big two SNES-era fighting games that I'm aware of (that are a series) are Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter (we'll say MK and SF). I grew up on old MK games, but don't know much about SF. The former seems to lean much more on violence while the latter is simply an arcade-style fun beat-'em-up.

With me being a big MK junkie who grew up looking up fatalities and having nobody as player two so I can perform them flawlessly, of course I'm gonna say I'd like to go with something more MK styled, with the more loose physics and all. So you could say "well, that's what you want so just make it!" but I know there are people around here who might be less into that and more into SF stuff, and since I do intend for this game to eventually be enjoyable by a legitimate audience and not just by people browsing old demos, I'd like for it to be appealing.

There's two big things I want peoples' preference on. Controls, and physics. Controls in MK seem more free than in SF which seems to just allow a bunch of different punches and kicks. Physics seem faster-paced in MK, but sometimes they don't seem to promote a lot of variety in the action (same with the controls, SF has more combos and stuff).

This post probably hasn't given a whole lot of food for thought (it's mostly here to say "I'm alive",) but regardless uh...thoughts?

I'm mostly the opposite. I didn't exactly grow up playing any fighting games, but I got a bit into Street Fighter games later on. I've never played Mortal Kombat at all.

Quote:

The former seems to lean much more on violence while the latter is simply an arcade-style fun beat-'em-up.

Somewhat similarly, the impression I get is that Street Fighter is known more for its technical end, whereas Mortal Kombat depends more heavily on thematic appeal. Though you could argue that a differentiator was necessary to counter the first-mover advantage, after which the game would naturally become known for said differentiator...

If I had to vote, I'd vote Street Fighter, but it's an uninformed opinion so don't take it too seriously.

...

If all you know is MK, it might be a good idea to familiarize yourself with Street Fighter games before making this decision. I think the best-playing classic SF games are probably Alpha/Zero 3 and III 3rd Strike, though the more famous II games do have a distinct flavour and you should probably try one of those first. The original Street Fighter is, shall we say, of mainly historical interest...

SNK fighters tend to have significantly different gamefeel, but I think they mostly follow the Street Fighter style - King of Fighters has multiple Shotoclones, for instance. It might still be useful to play one for perspective... or if I've overestimated just how different MK really is...

On the other hand, if you're a Mortal Kombat fan, maybe you're better off doing a MK-style game, since it might be easier to put your heart into it (darn it, I know there's a joke around here somewhere)...

I recommend one thing from MK: its more lenient special move recognizer that uses only key down, not individual positions of the whole Control Pad. This way, instead of requiring that the Control Pad be pressed Down, Down+Forward, Forward then Punch to do a fireball, do Down pressed, Forward pressed, A. This makes things like a rising uppercut (Forward Down Forward A), large fireball (Back Down Forward A), and the like easier to hit.

Or simplify the controls even further and just have one button for normal attacks (B), one for special attacks (Y), and one for block (L or R). Then choose weak, strong, low, or high attacks based on the Control Pad being neutral, forward, down, or up. This frees up A for an alternate jump.

Sometime ago, a company made a fighting game engine called Mugen, wich is the basis of many fan-made fighting games.Don't forget the Beats of Rage engine, wich is designed towards one vs a million instead of a one-on-one fighting as Mugen.I think this is kind of a open source project would look like.

About what I expect from a fighting game, well... I mostly want to see nice graphics, a good combo system, fast pacing combats and a cool history.Looks like both SF and MK have these aspects, as with the many SNK fighting games and others like Rushing Beat, Final Fight and Double Dragon series, just to say some of them...

- Please no more than three attack buttons. You have fighters where you have separate buttons for your left and right limbs. Don't do that. You also have fighters where you have five or six buttons of varying attack strengths, when three could probably do the job just fine, and make more complex attacks more discoverable.- Dedicated button for guard/block (and maybe throw?). Defensive options in fighting games make things a lot more interesting, and it's easier to learn if you have a big button that says "press this to block" instead of some random seemingly unrelated button input.- I suggest the following triangle: attack beats throw, throw beats block/counter, block/counter beats attack.- No more than one special guage! Don't confuse the player with a myriad of HUD elements.- Don't punish the player for playing badly (getting dizzy in SF2 because your opponent combo'd you... allowing them to combo you yet again)- Help the player figure out where and how they're making mistakes. As far as I can tell this is still an unsolved problem in the fighting game genre... good luck!

Lately, it's become common on modern platforms to optimize screen layout for 16:9 TVs. New Super Mario Bros. Wii, for example, is letterboxed when the display settings are 4:3. I'm aware that this loses vertical resolution, but using interlace can compensate somewhat, especially for slowly moving sprites. It's possible to use interlace only for still or slow cels, such as idle, guard, and knocked down, by using separate sets of sprite tiles for the low and high fields of these cels.

psycopathicteen wrote:

and has large well animated characters.

How large? And are we allowed to trade off background complexity to present one player's character as background instead of sprites?

Capcom's fighers on SNES all have mismatched letterboxing, and some people are of the opinion that this is an unnecessary artifact of the original Final Fight engine.

Double buffering sprite data is possible, and tepples has come up with a method of predictive loading that usually results in glitch-free animation on NES. Based on some preliminary calculations, it is suspected by some that even Street Fighter Alpha 2 could have been done at full size without letterboxing on SNES if the engine had been optimized properly.

One question that occurs to me is: is it better to accept the occasional animation frame delay, or to incorporate an across-the-board single-frame input delay?

Some games set forced blanking on the top and bottom 8-24 scanlines to buy additional time for DMA to VRAM. Battletoads did this on NES, as do Capcom fighters for Super NES.

The Super NES was designed for 4:3 TVs. Third- and fourth-generation game consoles put 256x224 pixels in the center of a 280x240 (NTSC) pixel plane that corresponds to the 4:3 frame. Modern TVs are 16:9; a 4:3 picture will either have black bars on the sides or have a bunch chopped off the top and bottom.

Consoles for 50 Hz markets with (PAL or SCART output) have more scanlines per field than NTSC. Most consoles aren't capable of reaching all these pixels, resulting in substantial letterboxing that becomes windowboxing on 16:9 sets.

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